Red Buttons Biography

Born Aaron Chwatt, February 5, 1919, in Manhattan, NY; died of vascular
disease, July 13, 2006, in Los Angeles, CA. Comedian and actor. Red
Buttons spent more than 60 years as a comedian and actor, his career
stretching from the last days of vaudeville and burlesque to the early
years of television to serious film roles to that ritual of pop culture,
the celebrity roast. His variety series,
The Red Buttons Show
, made him one of television's first stars in 1952. His role in the
1957 film
Sayonara
won him an Academy Award and decades of work as a serious character
actor. His dinner jokes made him one of the stars of the tribute dinner
circuit. Through it all, he played off his 5-foot-6 stature to create
quirky, mischievous humor and evoke tragic emotion. "I'm a
little guy," he said, according to Adam Bernstein of the
Washington Post
, "and that's what I play all the time—a little guy
and his troubles."

Buttons was born Aaron Chwatt on the Lower East Side of New York in 1919.
His father, a Polish immigrant and hatmaker, inspired Buttons to become an
entertainer. "He was a clown who liked to sing and dance,"
Buttons recalled, according to Dennis McLellan of the
Los Angeles Times
. "I noticed he made people happy, smiling, and that's what
I wanted to do." Buttons sang in the streets for change at age
seven and won a talent contest at age 12 at the Fox Corona Theater by
dressing in a sailor suit, billing himself as Little Skippy, and singing
the song "Sweet Jennie Lee." While still in high school, at
16, he got a job as a singing bellboy at a tavern on City Island in the
Bronx. Customers there gave him his stage name: Red because of his red
hair, Buttons because of the 48 brass buttons on his uniform. Like many
comedians of his time, he made a living performing in burlesque shows and
revues at resorts in New York state's Catskill Mountains. He first
joined the Catskills circuit as a singer the summer he was 16, but
switched to comedy after his voice changed. He earned $1.50 a week. In
1940 he married a stripper named Roxanne, but the marriage ended in an
annulment.

Buttons got a brief break in 1942, when he got a part on Broadway in the
comedy
Vickie
, then joined the vaudeville and burlesque company Wine, Women and Song,
which performed at New York's Ambassador Theater. Soon after, he
was drafted into the military. But joining the war effort did not put his
career on hold; it accelerated it. Buttons was cast in the armed forces
theater production and film
Winged Victory
, which made him well-known throughout the country. He and fellow comedian
Mickey Rooney toured Europe, performing for
American soldiers. He was master of ceremonies at a performance at the
Potsdam Conference for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Josef Stalin. After the war,
Buttons returned to Broadway, appearing in musicals and doing his comedy
routines for large audiences between big-band performances.

The greatest heights of Buttons' career, and perhaps his lowest
low, came in the 1950s. The CBS television network, looking for an
entertainer to compete with NBC's popular Milton Berle, made
Buttons the star of his own series,
The Red Buttons Show
, in 1952. The show attracted an audience of millions. They were charmed
by his characters, such as Rocky Buttons, a boxer who had been punched too
much, and a tough but kind juvenile delinquent named Muggsy Buttons. In
between comic skits, Buttons would dance while singing his "Ho Ho
Song," with its catchy refrain, "Ho ho! Hee hee! Ha ha!
Strange things are happening!" It became a catch phrase across the
country.

Buttons was named the 1954 Comedian of the Year by the Academy of Radio
and Television Arts and Sciences. But ratings for his show plummeted
during its second season, and a desperate Buttons fired and hired writers
frantically, going through 163 writers in two years. CBS cancelled the
show, and NBC picked it up, then changed it from a variety show into a
situation comedy before canceling it in early 1955. Buttons found it very
hard to get work for a while after that. "I found out how tough
show business can be," he said, according to McLellan of the
Los Angeles Times
. He scraped by while making nightclub appearances.

Director Joshua Logan, who admired Buttons and had seen him in a dramatic
role on a 1951 episode of the television show
Suspense
, helped save Buttons' career by casting him in the 1957 film
Sayonara
, starring Marlon Brando. Buttons played an American soldier in Japan
during the Korean War who defied regulations by marrying his Japanese
girlfriend. He won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for best
supporting actor for his role.

The performance and awards established Buttons as a respected character
actor, and he continued appearing in films for decades. He acted in the
1962 adventure film
Hatari!
with John Wayne, who quipped, according to the
Times
of London, "Red is the only guy who could steal a movie from a
monkey." Other prominent roles were in films such as
The Longest Day
, a 1962 flick about the Allied invasion of Normandy, France, in World War
II;
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
, a 1969 tragedy about desperate dance-marathon contestants during the
Great Depression; and the 1972 ocean-liner disaster film
The Poseidon Adventure
. As his film roles waned, he appeared as a guest dozens of times in
television series, such as
Knot's Landing
in the 1980s,
Roseanne
in the 1990s, and
Street Time
, a Showtime series, in 2002.

For decades, Buttons was a sought-after master of ceremonies for
"roasts," which are lunches and dinners paying tribute to
entertainers. It was often his job to tease the guest of honor with
cutting humor. When roasting cocktail-swigging singer Dean Martin, he
said, according to the
Times
of London, "If Dracula bit Dean in the neck, he'd get a
Bloody Mary." In the 1970s, when Martin made the dinners a TV
staple with the "Dean Martin Celebrity Roast" shows, Buttons
made frequent appearances on the show. He would often point out that he
himself was never roasted, and that many historical figures never were
either. "Abe Lincoln, who said, 'A house divided is a
condominium, never got a dinner," he would say, as quoted by
Bernstein in the
Washington Post
. Buttons also pointed out that the biblical figure Lot, "who said
to his wife when she was turning into a pillar of salt, 'Stop
shaking!'—never got a dinner." Fellow comedian Norm
Crosby told McLellan of the
Los Angeles Times
that Buttons' roast routine was his best work. "He made a
whole career out of one routine: 'I never had a dinner.' It
was just brilliant."

In 1995, Buttons performed a one-man show, Buttons on Broadway, at the
Ambassador Theatre in New York, the same place he had performed in
burlesque and vaudeville in 1942. Buttons' new show won him glowing
reviews. Acknowledging that his audience was made up of fans old enough to
remember his 1940s and 1950s performances, he began the show with the
greeting, "Good evening, fellow members of AARP," according
to Bernstein of the
Washington Post
. Buttons aged gracefully by joking about it. "Eighty isn't
old," he said in 1999, according to the
Times
of London. "You're old when your doctor doesn't
X-ray you anymore, he just holds you up to the light."

Buttons was married three times. His first marriage ended in annulment and
his second, to beautician Helayne McNorton, ended in divorce. His third
wife, Alicia, died in 2001. Buttons died on July 13, 2006, at his home in
Los Angeles, California, of vascular disease. He was 87. He is survived by
his son, Adam; his daughter, Amy; his brother and his sister.